


Is Not As Bad

by Skiewrites



Series: Wonderland [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Darkness, Dreams, Dreamsharing, Gen, Hunk & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, Hunk (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Hunk (Voltron) is so Pure, Hunk (Voltron)-centric, Mid-Canon, POV Hunk (Voltron), The Mindscape, Trapped
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-09 19:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12895041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skiewrites/pseuds/Skiewrites
Summary: Stuck in the Yellow Lion after the disaster that was Allura's rescue mission, Hunk thinks that being stuck in a dark off line lion couldn't possibly be the worst thing to have happened. But when the weird dreams about his teammates come knocking and his supplies quickly became limited, he begins to wonder how long it would take for him to die of lack of oxygen, water or food. But, hey, at least Shiro was in his dreams to help him out.Part three of 'Wonderland' Series





	1. |

When Hunk opened his eyes after finally escaping the corrupted wormhole, he was suddenly glad that, out of everything that could scare him in the universe, the dark wasn’t one of them.

There was the faint smell of smoke in the air, already telling him that some of the circuits had fried during the fight against Zarkon’s Central Command and there was the small bitter taste of blood from where he had bit his cheeks in frustration during the fight. There was no sound to be heard, not even the low hum of the machinery, or a soft purr of the Yellow Lion, quietly supporting him all the way, something he had grown used to in the last couple of months of being the Paladin of the Yellow Lion.

Worst of all, the cockpit was void of any light, leaving only his armour to fill in, causing the small room to be filled with a baby blue light that barely did anything to show him the state of the control board in front of him. Beyond the glass between Hunk and space was nothing but what he assumed to be deep space, where not even the brightest of stars could reach him.

This was Bad.

“Guys? Can you hear me?” He asked aloud, feeling his stomach drop to the cold depths of hell when, after a few doboshes, there was no reply, not even the static that was affecting their comms during the fight could be heard, leaving nothing but a deafening silence in his wake.

“Lance?”

Okay.

“Pidge?”

Don’t panic.

“Shiro?”

(They didn’t teach this in the Garrison.)

“Keith?”

(Is now a good time to panic?)

“Coran?! Allura?! Guys! Can you hear me?”

(He really wants to panic now.)

Hunk made sure to take a slow and deep breath as he sat up in the pilot chair, stretching his aching muscles and his shanking limbs, trying his very hardest to keep the panic from building up in his chest (not that it was working out for him very well).

Damn, he must have been out for a while.

Reaching over to squint at the controls in the low light, he began to press buttons, flick switches, turn nozzles, trying to see how much damage the Yellow Lion had come under, only to get more and more confused and frantic when nothing happened.

No light flashed in response, no screen popped up, no purr of his Lion to tell him everything was going to be okay.

He was no pilot by any means, not a properly trained one at least nor was it his first choice for a career path, but he was a mechanic. He knew that all these buttons should have done something, even if he didn’t know what that something was. There was no drone from Yellow, no reassuring hum like normal, not even any red flashing lights, or any lights really, to show that something was broken, making it seem as if there was absolutely nothing to worry about.

That was what tipped off the alarm bells in his head.

“Hey girl, now isn’t really the best time for napping, so if you could, I don’t know, wake up, for at least a minute, or a dobosh or whatever you want to call them, and tell me that everything’s a-okay, then that would be great.”

No response.

(He wasn’t expecting one.)

He pushed a lever forward, only for him to realise that it was locked into place, meaning that, without his lion being online, he would not be going anywhere.

(Was now a good time to panic?)

He could feel his breaths become shallower, taking in less oxygen each time. Hunk placed his shaking hands onto his knees, trying his hardest to take deep breaths as he silently counted each gasp of air, just like his Mamá taught him for when he got like this, and looked at the floor of the cockpit, observing at all the imperfections that the metal beneath him held, his breathing stopping every time he watched a tear fall from his face to join others in a puddle on the floor that reflected the blue light like a small pond while his ears twitched, looking for a sound that wasn’t his forced breathing and the racing blood behind his ear drums in the silence of space.

Now wasn’t the time to panic.

(His reaction to stressful situations hadn’t gotten any better since when he first left Earth.)

(But hey, at least he had _finally_ gotten over his motion sickness.)

Without being able to use Yellow, or even having access to a proper computer, Hunk was unsure of how long he spent in that position, counting the intakes, holds and releases of air into the small dark room of the room. It could have been a dobosh, it could have been several varga, but he doubted he’ll ever know how long he spent in the dark trying to calm himself down.

Where was Lance when you needed him? Hunk would give anything right now just to listen to his voice, going on about the small things in the universe that nobody really cared about, like how the food goo was probably better off as a product for his hair than something to solve his hunger, or how much Iverson’s going to moan about the homework that they never got to hand in when they got back to Earth (not if, because Lance didn’t want to think of the other options, none of them did), because they all knew that he wouldn’t take the whole ‘ _we ran away from our home planet to save the universe so we didn’t have time to complete the essay on the rules regulations of flying in the battle graded spaceships you gave us_ ’ excuse or how Keith’s mullet was a crime against the universe.

Lance always knew what to say when he felt anxious. Lance knew what calmed him down, he knew how to talk in the right tone that made him feel right at home and feel safe, no matter what subject he was talking about. It made the words wash right over him, and while Hunk regretted the fact that he could never seem to concentrate on what the actual words are, he still got the meaning of them.

_“It’s okay. You’re okay.”_

(He was not okay.)

_“You’re in a safe place.”_

(Was this part of space within the Galra Empire. Did they know that he was here?)

_“You have all the time in the world to ride this panic attack.”_

(He didn’t have the time for this. He needed to get out of here.)

_“Things are going to turn out just fine. Just you wait.”_

(He didn’t have the time for such an optimistic view.)

But Lance wasn’t here to tell him those things, nor were the rest of the team. He was alone, stuck in the middle of deep space, in a broken sentient ship that didn’t even have any lights on.

Hunk breathed in another shuddering breathe, and made sure to breath it out slowly.

He could do this, just one step at a time.

One really slow step if it came to it.

Standing up, Hunk put his hand against the edge of the control panel, and began to walk on his jelly legs as he felt around, seeing where everything was, his hand drifting over his Bayard, stuck in its port from where he had let it while going through the wormhole. Slowly, his hand moved on, guiding him around the Yellow Lion’s cockpit, the low light reflecting off the polished metal, giving the small room an eerie blue glow that reminded him too much of Alfor’s ‘ghost’. He made his footsteps quiet as his hand began to brush against the cold surface of the door, as if something bad would happen if he were to break the silence.

Hunk’s fingers jumped the small ditch that the door met at, and the thought of opening the door left his agitated mind as soon as it entered. The doors were powered by the Lion, and while Hunk was sure there was a reason as to why they were like that and that there was a way to open them without power (then again, with the ziplines to the Lion’s hangers in mind, Alteans didn’t seem to be the most practical of species…), it still left him in the cockpit.

All alone.

In the dark.

With no supplies, it seems.

Hunk almost collapsed into the pilot’s chair by the time he had made a full lap in the dark room, his whole body exhausted from, not only the physical fight against Zarkon and his main forces, but also from the mental strains that seemed to come along with being what could be billions of light years away from the others, away from help, away from light.

His body begged for rest, and Hunk couldn’t help but to give in to it’s simple demands, closing his eyes and letting his thoughts wonder, hoping from the bottom of his heart that, somehow, his team was close by to help him from the situation he had found himself in.

He’s last thought before nodding off in the dark room, void of any sound other than his own breathing, was the small burning hope that they weren’t in too much trouble.


	2. ||

_Opening his eyes, Hunk was greeted to the view of the desert._

_The sky above him was a brilliant blue, bright and vibrant, almost as if somebody had put the saturation up to 100%, shining down onto the fine sand and smooth rocks below with the biggest smile in the world, happy with the view it was getting. Not a single white, fluffy cloud littered it, so nothing was able to obscure the vibrant feeling it sent the barren ground below it. There wasn’t even a sun to shine down onto the Yellow Paladin, as if the mere idea of a flaming ball of gas would corrupt the perfectness that was the brilliant blue sky._

_Below it laid the desert, in which Hunk was an ant when compared to it’s vastness, as it reached to grasp the area that laid beyond the horizon. Between there and Hunk, what seemed to be miles away, laid mountains of sandstone, red and orange and yellow in colour. They stood sturdy and strong, stubbornly raised tall and mighty against the fast whipping wind that battled against the pillars of strength._

_The wind, while strong enough to battle down the stone that had stood strong for years, only felt soft and comforting in Hunk’s hair, as if a mother smoothing down their child’s hair, and left behind small peppered kisses over his cheeks, as if silently supporting him in his endearers. What should have been boiling temperatures, like back at the Garrison with the thick and scratchy uniforms, was more of a second skin, as if the desert itself was giving him a hug. The sand underneath his feet was almost like an inedible yellow sherbet, and, impossibly, none of it had yet to enter his shoes, or any of his clothing, his human clothing, the ones that he left Earth wearing._

_Hunk couldn’t help but to feel right at home here._

_It was ridiculous, really, as there didn’t seem to be anyone else here. It looked nothing like the busy New York City where he was brought nor like the small islands where is parents lived before immigrating. There were no buildings like he was used to, no cars or roads for people to travel on._

_There was nothing here but the sky, the sand, and the silence…_

_(He was beginning to hate the silence.)_

_(What a stupid dream.)_

_He takes one step unconsciously, then another, and another, until he’s walking straight ahead with no destination in mind, just letting his feet step into the soft but thin layer of sand that covered the rocky ground beneath. Staring at each foot as it presses into the sherbet, his ears straining for the sound of his footsteps into the floor as a frown appears on his face, and only grows deeper by the minute._

_There’s no sound to be heard._

_(It was like all the sound waves had been sucked out of the air, leaving him all alone.)_

_It made him wish for someone else to be there with him, to help fill the silence. He could rant to Lance about awesome the technology was on the Castle-ship, listen to Pidge as she went on about the different software that aliens had and how it tops the ones that Earth had by lightyears. Hunk could argue with Coran about what was actually edible on the ship, could exchange stories about their home planets with Allura. He wouldn’t know what Keith would talk about, but he was sure he could make a conversation... about knives?_

_He’ll even take Shiro and listen to one of his speeches about teamwork._

_But since none of them where there to fill the silence, he’ll just keep walking._

_And walking._

_And walking._

_And walking._

_And walk- Hang on a moment._

_Hunk’s eyes widened as he stared out form his place on the cliff’s edge, his breath coming out in short puffs. He hands franticly reached behind him to catch onto the wall, feeling the rough edges from the years of weathering on it, until his one of his hands were able to grab onto a curve into the rock. Below him was the desert, as empty as the Garrison halls at night (and he would know what they looked like due to the amount of times Lance dragged along on an ‘adventure’ to town), and above is the overly saturated blue sky._

_He could have sworn that he was on the desert floor a moment, and he was pretty sure he would have remembered climbing up a cliff to this height._

_But, then again, this wasn’t real, was it?_

_(Stupid dreams with their stupid physics and their stupid teleporting abilities.)_

_Turning to face the cliff wall, Hunk held a breath as he stared down a mouth of a cave, the wind leaving it at a steady speed, pushing his hair back form his face. He could see for about two meters into the cave until no more light entered it, leaving it darker than the Yellow Lion in it’s current state._

_And, despite the darkness that could hide anything and everything from him, it calls him to look inside, to come in deeper, to see the secrets that lurks in the shadows._

_He almost doesn’t go in, either. He almost turns away from the cave, willing to leave it alone and is almost ready to wake up in a broken Yellow and is almost ready to face the darkness and silence of the real world._

_But then he hears it._

_“Black.”_

_It’s quiet, but unmistakably Shiro’s voice, and it was coming from the cave._

_(In hindsight, he should have just remembered that it was all a dream.)_

_(A stupid dream with its stupid physics and its stupid teleporting abilities and its stupid voice that was pretending to be Shiro.)_

 

* * *

 

_Unsurprisingly, the cave is dark, which made Hunk feel less of an idiot shuffling forward with his hands in front of him to make sure he didn’t bump into any walls, or to catch him if (when) he fell._

_This had to be one of his worst ideas._

_Not the worst he’s ever played out mind. Lance once decided that t would be a great idea to try to steal Iverson’s eyepatch (the man even wears it to sleep!), but, unsurprisingly, it didn’t go to plan. They were very lucky that, at the same time, somebody set off lots of smoke bombs near Iverson’s quarters, meaning that they were able to make a quick getaway._

_It really wasn’t quick enough in Hunk’s opinion._

_(Lance, however, was more concerned about who actually set off the smoke bombs in the first place, and why on Earth they decided to do it in Iverson’s quarters instead of the student ones, and Hunk was about 87% sure that he was the one who started the rumour that Keith was the one to set them off, apparently wanting to gas Iverson in his sleep.)_

_(At the time, Hunk wanted to say that it was the most ridiculous rumour that floated around the Garrison. However, after meeting Keith, he was no longer so sure about it.)_

_Another shuffle forward brought Hunk to one of those dangly rock things that came down from the celling that nobody but geologists actually knew the name of. Moving himself around it, he continued to shuffle forward, his arms waving around ridiculously, until his foot came across a small rock that sent him hurling towards the floor, making him squeeze his eyes shut (despite the fact that he was in the dark), as if him not seeing it coming would make it stop, or at least be less of a surprise when he hit the stone-cold floor._

_So, you could imagine Hunk’s surprise when he didn’t hit the stone-cold floor of the dark and gloomy cave, or any stone-cold floor at all._

_No, instead of what should have been the darkness from the cave, or the brightness that came with the desert, Hunk was surrounded by the depths of space, except, in these depths, he could see the stars that were twinkling away, ready to invite him on a teddy bear picnic or something._

_It seems that his dreams have made him teleport again, except, this time, somewhere that was far, far, far away from the desert._

_(Stupid dreams with their stupid physics and their stupid voices that was pretending to be Shiro and their stupid, stupid teleporting abilities.)_

_It was still a dream though, because Hunk was about 99.9% sure that you could survive in space without a spacesuit, or at least some form of oxygen supply because, hello vacuum-due-to-the-large-gaps-between-atoms-in-a-very-large-space-and-thus-could-rip-you-apart-in-a-matter-of-microseconds._

_(Honestly, why Hunk thought it was a good idea to join the Garrison was beyond him really, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember how he managed to convince himself to join.)_

_(But at least now he was helping people now.)_

_In any case, the depths of space in his dream did look very pretty, with all the twinkling stars, and felt much more personal than just looking out of the Castle-ship or even looking out of the Yellow Lion._

_“Is everything okay, Black?”_

_Hunk’s eyes widened at hearing Shiro’s voice, pivoting his entire body to look behind and only to lose his breath at the sight of the Black Lion, standing tall and proud in front of him with a backdrop of twinkling stars._

_There was a reason why the Black Lion was the head of Voltron after all._

_He took a step closer, frowning at the lack of blue lights that was present in all the Lions, and the way that her eyes didn’t glow as they should when a Lion was online._

_Was she offline too? Were all the Lions offline?_

_“So, um, I take it that something’s wrong then.” Shiro’s voice again, but where was he? He was obviously talking the Black Lion, that much Hunk could be certain about, although, he couldn’t help but smile at the awkwardness that lingered in Shiro’s voice, who wasn’t used to having conversations with the Black Lion in the same way that he, Lance and Pidge were with their Lions._

_(Keith barely talked to them as a team, let alone his Lion.)_

_Maybe he was round the back of the Lion?_

_(Why would he be round the back?)_

_(Maybe he wasn’t there at all and his stupid dream was messing with him again.)_

_(Stupid dreams with their stupid physics and their stupid, stupid teleporting abilities and their stupid bloody voices that was pretending to be Shiro and making it out that he really was there when he obviously wasn’t.)_

_Stepping forward, Hunk slowly made his way towards the back of the Lion, making sure to look behind himself to make sure that Shiro didn’t decide to scare him or something. The stars in the distance stayed at the distance they originally were at, making Hunk wonder if it was even possible to even reach then._

_(Then again, they were probably light years away, and in a dream.)_

_(Or maybe they were a painted back drop that he could one-day reach.)_

_“Could you open up, please?” Hunk was at the tail of the Lion at this point, and by the wording of it, Shiro was near the opening of the Black Lion. Or, he should have been, because by the time Hunk got there, Shiro had disappeared again._

_Or maybe he wasn’t there in the first place, because, y’know, dreams did seem to be very fickle things._

_“Okay, this isn’t funny anymore Black. Where’s Shiro?” He asked, standing at the side of the Black Lion, staring off into ‘space’, or whatever it was really called, since it wasn’t space, with the twinkling stars yearning him to come closer to see their pretty sparkles and feel the dangerous heat that they constantly produce._

_“Hunk?” Shiro had spoken again, obviously, seeing that he was there._

_But Hunk had yet to see Shiro._

_“Shiro? Where are you, bro?” No later did the words leave his lips before he got the feeling of an icy bucket of water socked him from his head to his toes, and incredibly cold feeling of fear and dread rooting him to his spot._

_And, just like that, the Yellow Paladin left._

 

* * *

 

Gasping awake, Hunk almost threw himself forward and off the chair he slept in with the force that he woke himself up with, his eyes slowly adjusting to the low light emitted from his flight suit, lighting immediate area in the cockpit.

“Hey, Yellow,” Hunk whispered, despite the fact that nobody was around to hear them. “I had the weirdest dream. The Black Lion was in it, and I think Shiro was too, or his voice was at least…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I may have said that I was going to upload Shiro's chapter last week two weeks ago, but I needed to write this chapter at the same time and well, Hunk's was done first.
> 
> Next week, you have a choice! Do you want Lance's first chapter or Shiro's second chapter? Leave your vote down in the comments. I don't know when abouts next week I will be uploading it due to Christmas, but there WILL be an upload next week, even if it is later in the week or something.
> 
> More stuff related to this series, I have decide to write some oneshots! I currently have 9 planned, but I am open for more suggestions! Again, leave those in the comments or go to my tumblr!
> 
> Happy Holidays!!!!

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is [here!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/skiewrites)


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